Wireless communication has become an integral part of everyday life in the world today. Every day, millions of people use their mobile phones, cordless phones or Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) to communicate with their friends, business partners or family. Conventionally, wireless communication is made possible by the presence of wireless phones and base stations. To illustrate the process of wireless communication, consider a person, for instance, ‘Tom’, trying to call his friend ‘Peter’. Tom dials Peter's phone number on his phone to establish a call session between Peter and himself. When Peter's phone number has been dialed, a ‘request’ goes to a base station, indicating that Tom is trying to call Peter through his phone. The base station serves this request and establishes the call session between Tom's and Peter's phones.
In events such as football games, natural disasters, terrorist attacks, etc., many people try to call their family or friends at the same time. Consequently, the base station receives many call requests simultaneously. Typically, a base station has a limit to the maximum number of requests it can serve at a particular time. For example, a base station may serve a maximum of 10 requests at a particular time. Now, in situations of high congestion, such as the break-time during football games or a terrorist attack, the number of requests received by the base station generally exceeds the maximum limit. Therefore, the base station has to reject some of these requests due to resource constraints. A person calling a friend in such a situation may receive a message that says, “The network is busy. Please call later.” This may cause unnecessary trouble to the person who may have an urgent message for friends or family. Ideally, the base station should allow the maximum possible number of people to communicate with their families and friends in such situations.
In light of the foregoing discussion, there is a need for a method and apparatus for managing calls in wireless communication networks.
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